Charles Taylor and the Modern Moral Sources of the

Self

Mark Joseph T. Calano, Ph.D.

Ateneo de Manila University

I. Introduction:

H
uman persons are self-interpreting animals,1 but the
materials and resources with which they interpret

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

themselves change. The self is a self only within a particular
framework. This framework, however, is fleeting and changing
through time. In discussing the modern self, I draw greatly from
the Sources of the Self where Charles Taylor discusses thoroughly
his ideas on self and identity. Other terms in the title alone like
sources of the self and the making of modern identity imply that
Charles Taylor is offering a causal explanation of the development
of modern self by aiming to “articulate and write a history of
modern identity.”2 He writes:

The book is genealogical. I start from the present situation, from

formative ideas, from our conflicting forms of self-understanding,
and I try to unearth certain earlier forms from which they arise… it
is not a complete historical reconstruction, it is a very selective step
backwards to rediscover certain sources. 3

Charles Taylor, then, initiates a historical narrative of the

development of the modern identity in its relation to moral goods
and their sources. It is surprising that he never suggests adopting
a culture less contaminated by Western individualism and science
as the answer to the loss of spiritual and moral grounds. He looks
for the solutions within the Western civilization, describing his
work as an attempt to ‘retrieve’ the spiritual and moral grounds
to “bring the air back again into the half-collapsed lungs of the
1
Charles Taylor, Human Agency and Language: Philosophical Papers I (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1985), 4. Henceforth, this text is referred to as HAL. See also
Mark Joseph Calano, “Charles Taylor on Self-Interpretation: Understanding Interpreter and
Interpreted,” in Suri: The Official Journal of the Philosophical Association of the Philippines (1:1,
2012): 72-90.
2
Charles Taylor, Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (Cambridge:
Harvard University Press, 1989), ix. Henceforth, this text is referred to as SOS.
3
PPR, 110.

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 spirit.”4 Charles Taylor finds it vital to write a history of the
modern self to illuminate the modern identity as it is lived
today.5 Recounting this history contributes to self-knowledge by
focusing on the historical rather than the ontological, for much
of the human self come into being over time. “6[T]here is no self-
understanding without historical understanding… and there is no
historical understanding without self-understanding.”7
In adopting this analysis of the self, I hope that uncovering
the complexity of the modern self will lead to the acceptance of
the plurality of goods that Charles Taylor affirms.8 Knowledge of
the modern self will also lead to an appreciation of other cultures
and an appreciation of the spiritual and moral dimensions woven
in their specific cultures. In what follows, I relate the birth of the
modern self and outlines the four modern moral sources, namely,
inner depths, disengaged freedom, expressions of authenticity,
and the affirmation of ordinary life. The study concludes with how
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these different aspects of the modern self relate to each other in

the three broad horizons of identity, which are the self, the larger
order beyond, and the traditional theistic horizon.

II. Modern Moral Sources and the Distinct Self:

Strong evaluation is inescapable. Its presence situates the self

in the moral ontology of modernity. Charles Taylor insists that
this ontology include different goods: life goods and constitutive
goods.9 On one hand, “[a] life good is a property which makes life
worthy or valuable.”10 A modern man’s life goods consist in an
ethic of benevolence, an ethos of universal respect and justice, the
quest for individual self-realization and expressive fulfillment, the
ideals of freedom and self-rule, and the avoidance of death and
suffering.11 On the other hand, constitutive goods are “features of
the universe, of God, or human beings on which life goods depend
SOS, 520.
4

Ibid., 319.
5
6
Charles Taylor, Philosophy and the Human Sciences (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1985), 257. Henceforth, this text is referred to as PHS.
7
Charles Taylor, “Comments on Ricoeur’s History and Hermeneutics” in Philosophy of
History and Action Y. Yovel (ed.) (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1978), 24
8
SOS, 112, 503, 511, 514, 520.
9
PHS, 244.
10
Charles Taylor, “Reply to Baybrooke and De Sousa” in Dialogue (Winter 1994), 126.
Henceforth, further reference to this text shall be referred to as RBD.
11
SOS, 495.

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 and which command… moral awe or allegiance.” 12 These goods
are qualitatively different from each other. This condition denies
the possibility of having these goods harmoniously combined,
rank-ordered, or reduced to a more fundamental good.
Constitutive goods are largely unarticulated metaphysical
and epistemological ground on which life goods are constructed.
Embracing a constitutive good enables the human person to
generate whatever he has to affirm and adhere to a given life
good. The point of articulating constitutive goods is “to clarify and
make more vivid what is more involved in a certain life good and
often to empower one by a more potent sense of the constitutive

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

good as a source.”13 Taylor calls these constitutive goods ‘moral
sources’ “insofar as [humanity] turns to them in whatever way is
appropriate to them--through contemplation, or invocation, or
prayer, or whatever-- for moral empowerment.”14
In relation to this, Charles Taylor identifies the salient features
of the modern self as it is related to modern moral sources
by developing under the impact of the Enlightenment and
Romanticism. First is the sense of inwardness.15 Second is the
notion of freedom as a radical disengagement.16 Third is the self’s
sense of uniqueness combined with the egalitarian aspects of the
modern self.17 This third aspect further leads to the discussion
of authenticity in modern culture. This is the ethical imperative
to be true to the human person’s particular self. And fourth is
the affirmation of ordinary life. This cultural movement, the
affirmation of ordinary life, further informs the modern person.
Different, yet related to this cultural movement, is the ethic of
benevolence, the modern self’s desire to minimize avoidable
suffering.18 This is linked with another facet of the human person
that all individuals must be entitled to a life of minimal pain, a
dignity and respect attributed to all persons simply because they
are human.19
Taylor is not claiming an ontological situation for the whole
12
Charles Taylor, “Comments and Replies” in Inquiry 34 (1991): 243. Henceforth, this
text shall be referred to as CAR.
13
RBD, 130
14
SOS, 311.
15
Ibid., 158.
16
Ibid., ix.
17
Ibid., 12.
18
Ibid., 12-13.
19
Ibid., 394-95.

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 humanity as he tries to describe the distinctive modern self. This
remains to be an on-going project where more and more people in
more and more societies are converging. This happens at different
times, at different speeds, and in different ways in various parts of
the world. He is not describing “where everyone now is.” Rather,
he is describing a collection of self-understandings that are alien
and incomprehensible to those in pre-modern traditional cultures.

A. Sense of Inwardness:

The modern sense that the self is disconnected from a larger

cosmic order is associated with the self’s inwardness. But, there
is a direct connection between inwardness20 and the attrition of
cosmic orders of meaning. Taylor explains:

For the pre-modern… I am an element in a larger order… The

order in which I am placed is an external horizon which is essential
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to answering the question, who am I?… for the modern, the horizon
of identity is to be found within, while for the pre-modern it is
without.21

Taylor traces the first of these features to Plato, but sees the
modern emphasis on inwardness in St. Augustine and shows how
this conception changed since then.22
Plato’s insistence on the reign of order within the soul as a
result of the submission of human desire to reason and its vision
of the good manifests the first signs of the inward path. As the
single laws of human thought and feeling, the soul achieves within
itself a kind of unity. The person who is genuinely ruled by reason
is both at one with himself and centered within oneself, rather
than driven this way and that by conflicting desires. This centering
becomes so important in Plato’s thinking that success in the world
is no longer decisive, as he sees it, for personal happiness: the just
life is the most advantageous life even if one should have to suffer
for his acts of virtue.23
But, Plato’s theory is only a precondition for the rise of a sense of
inwardness. Its real emergence awaits Augustine’s transformation
20
SOS, 111, 114, 121.
21
PHS, 258.
22
SOS, 128-129, 140, 177.
23
Ibid., 111-126.

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 of Platonic epistemology and ethics because it is only Augustine
who created the distinction between ‘inward’ and ‘outward’. St.
Augustine’s inwardness is both a path towards God and a path to a
particular moral source. In Augustinian ethics, for example, there
is the insistence of goods that are spiritual and immaterial over
those that are merely corporeal and fleeting. In his epistemology,
he transforms Platonic good into an interior guiding light, which
makes thinking possible and is, in fact, an invariable standard
grounding the very activity of human reason itself. In other words,
with Augustine one can observe a shift towards ‘radical reflexivity’.
While all societies have a notion of reflexivity, not all have radical

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

reflexivity. Radical reflexivity refers to a focus on the self qua self,
the change in the focus of inquiry from the object to the subject of
experience. Taylor contrasts radical reflexivity and reflexivity in
the following manner:

If I attend to my wounded hand, or begin (belatedly) to think about

the state of my soul instead of worldly success. I am indeed concerned
with myself, but not yet radically. I am not focusing on myself as the
agent of experience and making this my object… Radical reflexivity
brings to the fore a kind of presence to oneself which is inseparable
from one’s being the agent of experience.24

This movement is epistemologically decisive because the

direction of one’s attention to the world is refocused to one’s activity
as a thinking person, the radical act of knowing one’s self. This
radical reflexivity is a prerequisite to the birth of the disengaged
subject of modern epistemology. Certainly, this is connected to
the positive sciences’ desire to know the world objectively. It is
an imperative to identify what the knowing subjects contribute to
the process of knowing.25 However, Taylor points out that radical
reflexivity developed in another way by providing the idea of the
human person with inner depths.26 Taylor argues that while both
the disengaged subject and the understanding of inner depths
are rooted in radical reflexivity, both approaches to the self soon
diverged. While Cartesian disengagement urged individuals to
abstract themselves from ordinary experience and idiosyncrasies,

Ibid., 130-131. Cf.PHS, 266-267

24

HAL, 112. SOS, 174-175, 232.

25

SOS, 173, 178, 183.

26

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 the recognition of inner depths encouraged a deeper exploration
of the self immersed in its everyday peculiarity.27 Descartes’
disengaged self is not Augustine’s self. The former is only a prelude
to moving upward to God, 28 while the latter is a prelude to further
self-exploration.
Charles Taylor further identifies the same pattern of ‘inward’
and ‘outward’ in Jean Jacques Rousseau. Rousseau thinks that
there is a close connection between the outside and the inside.
Just as the natural world becomes a source of moral renewal
so may an inward turn become a source of moral guidance and
happiness.29 So, the right thing to do, to be or to feel, is to be
determined by an inward turn, not an inquiry towards the opinion
of others.30 Rousseau, in proposing that nature is a moral source,
reacts against the disenchantment of the world and the promises
of the positive sciences. As it seems, Rousseau is troubled by the
seventeenth century scientific revolution, and fears the deleterious
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consequences of the hegemony of instrumental reason. Both,

according to him, obscure human natural feelings, which are
benevolent. This thinking was a great source of inspiration for the
Romantic tradition and its reaction against the Enlightenment.31

B. Disengaged Freedom:

Modernity no longer sees the human person as situated in

some larger cosmic order. The human person is no longer seen
as part of a world of forms, nor situated in the hierarchy of God’s
creation. Since the disenchanted world denies any intrinsic moral
meaning, the modern self is liberated from any preordained
meaning in the world.32 The erosion of belief in an inherently
meaningful world makes possible the nihilism of Nietzsche.33
Taylor does not only look at the negative effects of this erosion,
but reconsiders its positive effects. The positive effects include the
finding of freedom and the advent of the disengaged self. From

Ibid., 175, 182.

27

Ibid., 132, 134, 136, 390.

28
29
Charles Taylor, Hegel (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983), 25.
Henceforth, this text is referred to as HGL.
30
PHS, 272.
31
SOS, 368-369, 429, 456-457.
32
PHS, 256-260. SOS, 18, 160, 395.
33
SOS, 16-18.

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 this perspective, the human person emerges as the subject, whose
task is to understand and to give meaning to an objective world.34
Taylor grounds this understanding of the self from the seventeenth
century and identifies René Descartes, Francis Bacon, and John
Locke as its major exponents.35
The modern development of the private sphere, that valorizes
discipline and self-reconstruction at individual and social levels,
came from the neo-Stoic thinker Justus Lipsius. In his works,
Taylor sees the self as able to reconfigure itself and its world
in accordance with its will.36 This new view builds itself on the
idea of a disengaged self,37 for just as he becomes vulnerable to

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

external forces beyond his control, the self also aspires to master
his passions and desires. The disengaged self is in full favor
of objectification; he “has broken with religion, superstition,
resisted the blandishments of those pleasing and flattering world-
views which hide the austere reality of the human condition in
a disenchanted universe. He has taken up the scientific attitude.
The direction of his life is set, however little mastery he may have
actually achieved.”38
In this process, the self becomes increasingly insulated and
more tightly bounded from the world.39 Thus, he is “capable of
objectifying not only the surrounding world, but also his own
emotions and inclinations, fears and compulsions, and achieving
thereby a kind of distance and self-possession which allows him to
act ‘rationally.”40 This restricted conception of the self contributes
to the development of exclusive humanism by isolating the self
farther from the surrounding world. By ‘exclusive humanism’,
Charles Taylor refers to a moral-cum-spiritual outlook that
construes human flourishing in worldly terms, without reference
to God, divinity, or transcendent goods. It gives an account of
human development, of selfhood, society, and politics without
reference to God, the divine or transcendent concerns. While many
traditional doctrines see the human person as realizing himself
only in relation to a wider cosmic order, this distinctively modern
34
HGL, 7 & 539. SOS, 188.
35
PHS, 258.
36
MTS, 308.
37
PAS, 66-78.
38
SOS, 46.
39
Ibid., 159, 161, 172, 174, 196-197, and 314-315.
40
Ibid., 21.

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 approach to the self is characterized by his capacity to understand
and define himself in the absence of any attachment to this wider
cosmic order.41 This, however, does not disclaim any belief in God
or any other transcendent moral source in the modern age. What
Taylor wants to say is that while individuals continue believing
in a God or any other transcendent moral source, this belief no
longer possesses an overarching, shared, public framework of
meaning.42 It does not totally define the human person anymore.
This modern idea of a disengaged self develops further the
emphasis on rationality started by Socrates. Being rational
means striving to acquire mastery over self and the world. The
disengagement is mental and intellectual.43 Correct knowing
depends on its process or method. The validity of knowledge is
dependent in the validity of its methodology. This seems prevalent
in Descartes, but Taylor sees its influence spreading far more
widely in western culture. This epistemological doctrine seems to
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be an approach to selfhood for Charles Taylor. First, this doctrine

constructs the self as detachable from the surrounding world.
This thinking also allows the human person to be a subject in a
totally objective world. Second, this disengagement is also applied
to the self.44 The reorganization of the material world includes the
self.45 This situation creates a radical disengagement from and
towards the self, which Taylor calls as “a new, unprecedentedly
radical form of self-objectification.”46 Analyzing the work of John
Locke, Taylor finds its fullest articulation and describing it thus:

The disengagement both from the activities of thought and from

our unreflecting desires and tastes allows us to see ourselves as object
of far-reaching reformation. Rational control can extend to the re-
creation of our habits, and hence of ourselves… The subject who
can take this kind of radical stance of disengagement to himself or
herself with a view to remaking, is what I want to call the “punctual”
self. To take this stance is to identify oneself with the power to
objectify and remake, and by this act to distance oneself from all the
particular features which are objects of potential change. What we
are essentially is none of the latter, but what finds itself capable of

41
HGL, 6-7.
42
SOS, 312, 381, 401, 491.
43
Ibid., 149.
44
Ibid., 161.
45
MTS, 303-304 & 308-309.
46
SOS, 171.

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 fixing them and working on them. 47

This modern aspiration to disengagement represents a moral

ideal in as much as it does represent an epistemological ideal.48
Correct knowledge of the self and the world leads to freedom
from nature and determinism, a belief in the dignity that comes
from human reason and the pursuit of truth, and the appeal to
power and instrumental control.49 These moral underpinnings
and sources allow one to better appreciate this notion of the self.
The development of the disengaged subject by Descartes and
Locke undergoes further elaboration in the course of Taylor’s

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

exposition of the contemporary sense of self. New emphases
inevitably emerge, such as Kant’s insistence on a morality that is
grounded on nothing but the human rational will and his rejection
of any and every form of heteronomy.50 But even so one can see
that with Descartes and with Locke the major elements of modern
identity are already in place, a human person characterized by
disengaged freedom.

C. Expressions of Authenticity:

Only one element needs to be identified for this picture

of modern identity to be complete, namely, expressions of
authenticity. To be true to one’s self is another distinctive feature
of the modern self. The self is an individual project where the
human person needs to decide who he authentically is. Every
human person is unique in his own way. This forbids the self’s
imitation of a pre-existing model or the self’s adaptation of what
is socially imposed. Each human person must discover an original
way of being, recognize it as the true expression of himself, and
take responsibility for it. Taylor sees the late eighteenth century
as the bulwark of individual differences. Although differences in
taste, temperament, preferences, values, abilities, and inclinations
are recognized, they have not been invested with ethical salience.

Ibid.
47

Compare MacIntyre, who describes the peculiarly modern concept of authority as

48

one which excludes the notion of reason. This separation is “fashioned in a culture to which the
notion of authority is alien and repugnant, so that appeals to authority appear irrational.” Alasdair
MacIntyre, After Virtue: A Study in Moral Theory (Indiana: Indiana University Press, 2007), 41.
49
HGL, 9. HAL, 112-112. S, 152, 163, 168, 174-175, & 177.
50
SOS, 364.

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 As Taylor writes:”[N]owhere before the modern era was the
notion entertained that what was essential to us might be found
in our particular being. But this is the assumption underlying the
identity question.”51
While Taylor sees the climax of this ideal in the late eighteenth
century, he acknowledges the traces of this ideal in the seventeenth
century in the work of Michel de Montaigne, who initiated the
movement toward self-exploration by recognizing that the
search for a universal human nature can never resolve the issue
of who humans as individuals are; and the movement gained
further momentum in the eighteenth-century theory of moral
sentiments.52 This French thinker illustrated a turn toward the
self as a mystery to be unravelled. Taylor describes Montaigne’s
positions clearly:

We seek self-knowledge, but this can no longer mean just

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impersonal lore about human nature, as it could for Plato. Each of us

has to discover his or her own form. We are not looking for universal
nature; we each look for our own being. Montaigne therefore
inaugurates a new kind of reflection which is intensely individual…
it is entirely a first-person study.53

The rise of the modern novel also furthered Montaigne’s work,

with its detailed portrayal of the lives of particular people. Instead
of the archetype of mythology, the modern novel taught the lesson
that it is in the particular stories of their individualized character
that the real truth is to be found. Ultimately, who the human
person is lies on the purposes and capacities that are there to be
discovered within himself.54
The notion of the self as a being with an inner depth is closely
linked to the doctrine of expressivism. As Taylor explains:

[O]nly with the expressivist idea of articulating our inner nature

do we see the grounds for construing this inner domain as having
depth, that is, a domain which reaches farther than we can ever
articulate, which still stretches beyond our furthest point of clear
expression. 55
51
Ibid., 375.
52
Ibid., 283-284.
53
Ibid., 181. Cf. PHS, 272.
54
Ibid., 286-287.
55
Ibid., 389.

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 This thought is clearly manifested in Taylor’s expressivism. In
trying to know a human person’s identity, he is called to an inward
path to get in touch with who he is. In expressing his discovery, he
gives life to his identity. It is only him who can find his identity. It
does not pre-exist and somebody cannot just retrieve it. As Taylor
writes, “the idea which a man realizes is not wholly determinate
beforehand; it is only made fully determinate in being fulfilled.”56
Thus, the involvement and uniqueness of the interpreter is
crucial in this process of interpreting and expressing. Indeed, for
Romantics, it is the very originality that marks individuals that

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

ought to determine how each would live their lives. It ought to set
the measure according to which all will be judged.57
The connection between the individual and the larger world
informs Taylor’s analysis of post-Romantic art. This epiphanic art
is considered as a part of the moral sources. Taylor speaks of this
as he is talking about “the search for moral sources outside the
subject through languages which resonate within him or her.”58
A particular art is, then, expressing a personal quest. Taylor’s
remarks on poetry apply to this:

In the post-Enlightenment world, the epiphanic power of words

cannot be treated as a fact about the order of things which hold
unmediated by the works of the creative imagination… To be moved
by the poem is also to be drawn into the personal sensibility which
holds all these together. The deeper, more general truth emerges
only through this. 59

There is no way however that the ethics of authenticity negates

the communitarian aspects of the self. The ethics of authenticity
does not preclude any feature of the self. There is no proscription
against gender, race, ethnicity, religion, class, et cetera. What
Taylor is saying is that these shared features can only figure one’s
identity in so far as the person involved declares himself a part
of these dialogical features. In The Ethics of Authenticity, Taylor
claims that living according to one’s inclinations is empowered by

56
HGL, 16.
57
SOS, 375-376.
58
Ibid., 510; original emphasis.
59
Ibid., 481.

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 a moral ideal.60 The ideal of authenticity admonishes all human
persons to find their own inclinations and ways of being and cast
it in a moral vocabulary.
Taylor gives emphasis to the expression of one’s authenticity:
“Expressive individuation has become one of the cornerstones
of modern culture. So much so that we barely notice it, and we
find it hard to accept that it is such a recent idea in human history
and would have been incomprehensible in earlier times.”61 Taylor
illustrates this by looking at the life of the Protestant reformer,
Martin Luther. Martin Luther’s rejections of Catholicism brought
him into an identity crisis. This is due to the fact that his identity is
situated in a moral space provided by Catholicism, the very system
he is rejecting. In this situation, Luther can not just understand
his experience in terms of expressive authenticity nor understand
himself in terms of looking upon the ultimate horizon of meaning
as a personal one. Rather, Luther finds meaning in his crisis by
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defining the condition of every human being as depraved by sin

and redeemed by grace. According to Taylor, it is impossible to
experience Luther’s identity crisis in the same way we experience
crisis today: Before such a crisis and such spiritual struggles could
be described in terms of identity, it was necessary to conceive
the ultimate horizon of each individual as being in some sense
personal.62
While the figure of Martin Luther is a good foil to the dimension
of expressive authenticity, his position stands at the threshold
when it comes to the affirmation of ordinary life.

D. Affirmation of Ordinary Life:

Distinctive of the modern civilization is the obligations and

commitments of ‘ordinary life’ that embody moral and spiritual
values worthy of respect.63 In discussing the affirmation of
ordinary life, Charles Taylor speaks of obligations of production,
the making of things needed in life, and of reproduction, the life

60
Charles Taylor, The Ethics of Authenticity (Cambridge: Harvard University Press,
1992), 15-17. Henceforth, this text is referred to as TEA.
61
SOS, 376.
62
Charles Taylor, “Identity and Modernity” in Twenty-five years: Social Science and
Social Change (Princeton: Institute for Advanced Study, May 8-11, 1997).
63
SOS, 11-13; Cf. 211-212.

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 of marriage and family life.64 The phrase ‘affirmation of ordinary
life’ is a legacy of Protestantism that manifests itself now in a
secular way. This distinctive feature of the self means that a part
of identifying the person’s identity is expressed in the realm of
work and family life.65 Taylor compares this modern notion with
the outlook of classical Greece. In classical Greece, production and
reproduction were instrumental activities that made a person
less human as compared to political activity and philosophical
contemplation. A life of pure labor does not distinguish a human
person from an animal.66 According to him, the Graeco-Roman
vision of good life allowed no space for an ethic of work. The same

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

is the case with the moralists of antiquity and the Renaissance
who are more concerned with ideals of honor and glory. The
perspective is not altered with Christianity that simply replaced
the worship of heroes with the worship of saints.
Protestantism denies that there are activities that are
qualitatively higher than others, and proposes that all activities are
worthwhile, depending on how they are conducted. This makes
the most menial activity worth doing, provided that it is practiced
with the appropriate attitude.67 This perspective challenges not
only the traditional aristocratic ethos, but also the traditionally
Catholic one. The Calvinists attacked the traditional Catholic
separation of the sacred and profane.68 In place of the hierarchy
of status and activity, there is another hierarchy of attitudes and
dispositions.69 This leads to a newly acquired significance of the
worlds of production and reproduction. Working with dedication
and diligence becomes more important than the type of work,
and family life and marriage are devoted to God.70 These things
were not so much sources of personal fulfillment. They were
rather always thought to lead humans to God. In due time, the
religious justification lost its hold, and ordinary life was seen as
a necessary ingredient to one’s personal identity.71 What was
changed is the ethical significance with which production and
64
Ibid., 211.
65
HAL, 155 & 255.
66
PHS, 155-156. SOS, 13-14, 211, 314.
67
SOS, 13-14, 218, 221-224.
68
HGL, 9.
69
SOS, 214-217.
70
Ibid., 226-227 & 292.
71
Ibid., 289.

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 reproduction were viewed. With the affirmation of ordinary life,
production and reproduction came to occupy a primary place in
the human person’s sense of what makes life worth living; this is
unprecedented.72
The affirmation of ordinary life is aided by other social
developments such as industrialization and its systematic
separation of workplace from home, and urbanization and the
rise of the nuclear family. Among all these social developments,
the birth of Marxism leads to the furthering of the affirmation
of ordinary life.73 Marxism focuses on production as pivotal to
human identity in a secular way. For Marx, the way human beings
reproduce their material lives distinguishes the human person
from animals. It is Puritanism that gave rise to an ethic of work
and marriage serving as the main progenitor of a bourgeois scale
of values in which ‘ordinary life’ came to be seen as sanctified.74
Charles Taylor claims, “The full human life is now defined in terms
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of labour and production, on one hand, and marriage and family

life, on the other.”75 By emphasizing on the value of work, Taylor
emphasizes that in acting as ‘producers’, the human person is
able to gain satisfaction by creating “the things needed for life.”76
Modern human person see themselves as the sources and creators
of the values by which they live. This vision of a desacralized world,
lacking a sense of God as an immanent force, appears to have come
from Max Weber. Nevertheless, Taylor develops the argument by
retracing the steps in a historical survey from ancient Greece to
the philosophy of the Enlightenment.77
The affirmation of ordinary life complements the image of a
free disengaged self by becoming the site of self-discovery and
emotional fulfillment for many. The privacy in family life further
adds to this symbiosis. Taylor writes of:

[A] society in which (in principle) everyone has adequate private

space for a full family life. This is central to the fulfillment of the man
and wife, as companions and lovers, and also as parents. And it is
also the locus in which the next generation is nurtured, so that the

72
Ibid., 292-293. PHS, 254-255.
73
PHS, 215.
74
SOS, 224-225.
75
Ibid., 213.
76
Ibid., 211.
77
Ibid., 109-207.

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 children in turn will be able to discover and seek their own affinities.
The contemporary family ideally has not only the space to live an
unmediated existence unhampered, but also the means to foster the
development and self-discovery of its children.78

To affirm ordinary life is to believe that a significant part of

one’s identity is expressed in the realms of work and family life,
and that what happens in these domains makes a substantial
contribution to one’s sense of the value or meaning of life.79 Taylor
is not saying that prior to the spread of the doctrine of affirmation
of ordinary life people did not love their children or spouses not

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

that they gained no satisfaction from their work. What changes
is not the existence of these things but the ethical importance
with which they are imbued. With the affirmation of ordinary life,
family relationships and work come to occupy a central place in
people’s sense of what makes life worth living and this, according
to Taylor, is unprecedented.80 Despite the complexity and plurality
of the modern self, its various strands unite in the same moral
space.
Although Charles Taylor is describing conceptions of the
good and the self “which are at home in the modern West”,81 he
thinks that this new culture at the beginning of the nineteenth
century is radiating ‘outward and downward’ to the rest of the
world ever since.82 In discussing the disenchantment of the world,
Taylor thinks that, “deism did prepare the way for the radical
Enlightenment.”83 The disenchantment of the world subsequently
leads to the ‘affirmation of ordinary life.’84 Thus, in Taylor’s words,
this disenchantment of the modern culture “created the situation
in which old horizons have been swept away and all frameworks
may appear problematical.”85
However, there are also some strands of the modern self
that are ambivalent with one another. While the affirmations of
ordinary life, the ideal of authenticity, and self-fulfillment are
complementary, they can also lead into opposite directions. For
78
PHS, 262.
79
Ibid., 155 &2 55.
80
SOS, 292-293.
81
Ibid., ix.
82
Ibid., 305.
83
Ibid., 266.
84
Ibid., 211-302.
85
Ibid., 26

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 some human persons, the particular call to authenticity and the
desire for self-fulfillment can lead to the negligence of obligations
to one’s family life. As Taylor puts it, “[i]f my development, or
even my discovery of myself, should be incompatible with a long-
standing association, then this will come to be felt as a prison,
rather than a locus of identity. So marriage is under great strain.”86
Another example of the different strands conflicting is Taylor’s
analysis of the Romantic expressivist self as a reaction against
the disengaged free self.87 At the same time, the Romantic self
is building on the individualism of the disengaged self.88 From
these few examples of the different complexities and ambiguities
in the modern notion of selfhood, I interpret Taylor’s pluralism
forcefully.89

III. Homo Religiosus:

Calano ...

Charles Taylor traces the modern moral sources back to theism.

For example, the ideal of disengaged reason and freedom is an
offshoot from Christian roots.90 The same is true in the value of
scientific inquiry,91 and the Romantic aspiration to make contact
with nature, and the like. These moral sources, according to him,
are parasitic on constitutive goods that they do not acknowledge
or may even repudiate.92 Further, Taylor goes to the extent of
claiming that the values of freedom, individualism, reason,
equality, and benevolence, which is accepted in modern western
societies ultimately find their moral source in Christianity.93 Thus,
in insisting on the need to return to this constitutive good in
order to understand the modern self, Taylor is clearly according
considerable power to Christianity.94 As Michael Morgan writes:

Ibid., 283.
86

HGL, 22-23 & 540. PHS, 270-271. SOS, 390 & 495.
87

PHS, 273, 276-277, 287.

88
89
PHS, 273, 276-277, 287.
90
SOS, 245.
91
Ibid., 310 & 320.
92
Ibid., 339.
93
Ibid., 495-496 & 498. `
94
In his 1996 Marianist Award lecture, Charles Taylor argues that he had kept his
religious views implicit in his previous philosophical writings for two reasons. The first was that
philosophical discourse requires a widespread appeal to all thinkers irrespective of their own
belief-systems. Charles Taylor, A Catholic Modernity: A Marianist Award Lecture 1996 (Dayton,
OH: University of Dayton Press, 1996), 13. [Henceforth, this book shall be referred to as ACM.] The
second reason is that theistic arguments are generally not welcome in a predominantly secularist
academic world. Ibid., 118-119.

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 [I]f Charles Taylor is right, the complexity of these narratives
converges on a common conclusion, that the modern identity… cannot
be properly comprehended without reference to its religious history.
To understand who we are and what matters most to us necessarily
involves retrieving the religious elements of our identity.95

While Morgan affirms the theistic elements of Charles Taylor,

the Sources of the Self is only implicitly hoping for a better world
in the Judaeo-Christian theism,96 and in its central promise
of a divine affirmation of the human.97 However, in A Catholic
Modernity, Charles Taylor contends that the modern emphasis on

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

universal benevolence is grounded on the desire to emulate God’s
divine and unconditional love.98 In this sense, Taylor is somehow
expressing his ideas in a more explicit way in the conclusion of the
Sources of the Self.
Charles Taylor attempts to argue for the Christian idea of going
beyond life by arguing that life does not exhaust the “point of
things”.99 For him, this emphasis on transcendence means “aiming
beyond life or opening yourself to a change in identity.”100 “The
change here is not a mere cultural change from a modern western
subject to a nonwestern subject, it is a change from self to non-
self.”101 This transformation is “a radical decentering of the self in

95
Michael Morgan, “Religion, History, and Moral Discourse” in Philosophy in an Age
of Pluralism: Charles Taylor in Question, J. Tully (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 49.
96
Taylor clearly accepts the problem he faces in putting forward Catholicism as a model
for a better world. For example, he realizes that Christianity and Catholicism have resulted in
atrocities such as the Inquisition but counters that secular philosophies that have tried to replace
Christian faith have scarcely led to better results and in many cases have been much worse.
ACM, 17-18. Hence, in his defense of Christianity, Taylor argues that where Christianity has been
undermined in the past Christians like himself should see this as both ‘humbling’ and ‘liberating’.
Ibid., 18.the humbling aspect is a result of secularists who show the dark side of Christian beliefs.
The liberating aspect originates in Christians like Taylor recognizing the truth in such a criticism
and drawing appropriate conclusions. The problem with the negative aspects of the Christian past
is that it stifles any positive discussions of modern Catholicism. Taylor argues that such negative
aspects do not mean that Christian have nothing more to say. Ibid., 19. Although Christian past
has its own wreckage which should be repudiated, Taylor urges to liberate the present from such
outright dismissals and in this way liberate the past. Ibid., 107-108. Moreover, Taylor maintains
that even the negative past also contains positive moments with “many spiritual forms, modes of
prayer, devotion, of common life, that could help [the human person] revivify the love and service
of God in the present. Ibid., 108. Taylor, then, is well aware of the difficulties he faces in trying
to put forward a transcendent position within a Catholic framework; however, he is absolutely
convinced that attempting to think beyond ‘what is’ is essential for humanity.
97
SOS, 521. Charles Taylor, “Reply and Articulation” in Philosophy in an Age of
Pluralism: Charles Taylor in Question, J. Tully (ed.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1994), 226-230.
98
ACM, 30-37 & 120.
99
Ibid., 20.
100
Ibid., 21.
101
Ibid.

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 relation with God.”102 For Taylor, “God wills human flourishing, but
‘thy will be done’ doesn’t reduce to let human beings flourish.”103
The role of religion is to make God’s many potential wills clear
and distinct. To acknowledge the transcendent is to acknowledge
the will of God. With Taylor the believer, the ideal of promoting
human welfare in favor of upholding God’s will is the flourishing
of human life.104

He explains:

In Christian terms, if renunciation decenters you in relation with

God, God’s will is that humans flourish, and so you are taken back to
an affirmation of this flourishing, which is biblically called agape.
In Buddhist terms, enlightenment doesn’t just turn to you from the
world, but also opens the flood-gates of metta (loving kindness) and
karuna (compassion). 105
Calano ...

Agape is reached by embracing God’s will and affirming the

flourishing of human life. This already exists according to Taylor.
Agape, expressed in the concern to “increase life, relieve suffering,
foster prosperity,” inspired the fourth movement of the modern
identity; the affirmation of ordinary life from which the modern
good emerged.106 Taylor explains this relationship further:

With the affirmation of ordinary life, agape is integrated in a

new way into an ethic of everyday existence. My work is my calling
ought to be for the general good. This insistence on practical help, on
doing good for people, is carried on in the various semi-secularized
successor ethics, e.g. with Bacon and Locke. The principal virtue in
our dealing with others is now no longer just justice and temperance
but beneficence. With the internalization of ethical thought, where
102
Ibid.
103
Ibid.
104
Charles Taylor speaks of a “spiritual lobotomy,” which denies any consideration of
the transcendent and instead focuses solely on human flourishing in the present [Ibid., 19.], and
of his concern to reassert the importance of the transcendence in emphasizing that “more than
life matters.”[Ibid., 24.]Taylor’s emphasis on both human flourishing, and spiritual transcendence
can lead to a kind of dualism where such oppositions have been used to deny life. He clearly wants
to avoid such dualism and suggests that we move back and forth these two moments of human
flourishing on the one hand and going beyond life on the other. [Ibid., 109-110. Charles Taylor
is sensitive to the tendency of the term ‘transcendence’ to lead to theological and spiritual dead
ends. He actually admits his discomfort in using the term ‘transcendence’ as it does not quite
capture exactly what he wants to say. Ibid., 105-106. He recognizes that the aforementioned term
is both ‘abstract’ and ‘evasive’, but he uses the term because he wanted to say something general
which could appeal to all people, not just Christians, in indicating how the human race needs to
get beyond the narrow focus on the ‘exclusively human’.]
105
Ibid., 18.
106
Ibid., 19

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 inclinations are crucial, the motive of benevolence becomes the key
to goodness.107

Charles Taylor looks at the Christian notion of agape, the “love

that God has for humans which is connected with their goodness
as creatures”108 as more fecund than the humanist’s universal
benevolence and justice. In the absence of agape, Taylor wondered
whether humans are “living beyond [their] moral means.”109
In all this Taylor hopes that uncovering the complexity of the
modern self, and its different strands will free people from the
tendency to deny and stifle the plurality of goods that modern

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

selves effectively, if not always knowingly, affirm. Taylor shares
with Nietzsche a powerful awareness of the multiplicity and
complexity of the modern self, but it seems that for the former,
the template for thinking about humans as intrinsically plural is
theistic. This is evident in the idea that “human diversity is part of
the way in which [humanity is] made in the image of God.”110

IV. Conclusion:

The modern self is a unity in diversity. This is clearly manifested

in the different strands that comprise the self and that are mutually
reinforcing. In the Sources of the Self, I read that Charles Taylor’s
analysis of the modern self is divided into three broad horizons
of identity. The first centers the individual, the second points to
the larger order beyond, and the third is the traditional theistic
one. Taylor thinks that identifying these three horizons allows
the contemporary person to understand the changing notion of
the self from the scientific revolution to the present day. 111 The
first horizon focuses on the self and its capabilities. It includes
the self’s desire to disengagement and to instrumental control
of both the natural world and the non-rational parts of the self.
At the same time, this individualist frontier encompasses the
expressive powers of the self and its quest to articulate and live its
own authenticity. The latter is, however, a reaction to the ideal of

107
SOS, 258
108
Ibid., 516.
109
Ibid., 517.
110
ACM, 14-15.
111
SOS, 390, 495, 498.

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 disengaged freedom. What unites the former and the latter is that
they center on the individual.112
The second horizon of identity refers to nature as the wider
whole of which the human person is a part. The idea is similar
to the theory of moral sentiments, that the world is a whole
with particular entities. This is also manifested in the Romantic
notion that nature is a source of good. Contact with the wider
vista is possible only if the human person can make an inward
and outward turn.113 The inward turn gives emphasis on the self
and its powers, no longer as an autonomy, but in relation to the
larger whole.114 The possibility of this explains Taylor’s claim that
modern individualism is not only manifested in selfishness and
indifference.115
Just as the self and its powers, on one hand, intersect with the
wider world, on the other hand, they both overlap on the third
horizon of identity, which is the theistic one. Taylor’s argument
Calano ...

remains that the disengaged and punctual self that grew out of the
scientific revolution is of theistic origins. Reason is given emphasis
to prove the possibility of rational control over nature and the self.
“The awesome powers of human reason and will are God-made
and part of God’s plan; more, they are what constitutes the image
of God in us.”116 In exercising reason, the disengaged subject
is deploying a capacity given by God. This is why the rational
capacity is closely related to human dignity. The same applies to
the second horizon. Nature is good because God as an expression
of His goodness and love created it.
On one hand, Taylor insists that the modern individual
recognize that the modern culture has built ‘higher standards’
into “the moral culture of our civilization” than ever recorded in
history.117 A modern person must accept that his inherited values
and way of life are good, and constitute “something that [he has] to
embrace,”118 even if his notion of ‘good’ is historically conditioned.
On the other hand, Charles Taylor suggests the right attitude
112
Indeed, Charles Davis identifies modernity precisely with “the affirmation of an
autonomous, self-legislating, self-related subject and the insistence upon a doctrine of immanence
that refuses submission to anything that attempts to impose itself heteronomously
113
SOS, 314-315.
114
TEA, 91.
115
Ibid., 35 & 40-41.
116
Ibid., 315.
117
SOS, 397
118
Ibid., 347.

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 towards disenchantment by recounting the inadequacy of modern
values. He sees the inadequacy from the vision of modernity as the
offspring of the Enlightenment and Romantic movements. From
the Enlightenment, the modern person acquires the atomized
conception of the self. And from Romanticism, the modern
person develops his inner nature and explores his potentialities.
The result is an atomic conception of the self that is cut off from
the wider sources of meaning and moral significance.119 This is
unfair, according to Charles Taylor, because the human person
has a “craving for being in contact with or being rightly placed
in relation to the good.”120 Taylor writes: “[The way people live]

Charles Taylor and the Modern....

involves stifling the response in us to some of the deepest and most
powerful spiritual aspirations that humans have conceived.”121

119
Ibid., 37-40 & 495-521.
120
Ibid., 45.
121
Ibid., 520.

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